


learn, one day (the folly of being comforted)

by speakmefair



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hound of the Baskervilles, Implied Relationships, Mind Palace, PTSD, Reichenbach Falls, implied suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:26:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/pseuds/speakmefair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock didn't go lightly to the rooftop of St Barts'.  But he had good reasons.  And one of them was his own sanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	learn, one day (the folly of being comforted)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hitlikehammers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/gifts).



Sherlock doesn't dream. Or if he does, it's of the things he knows, letting his mind soar; letting truth submerge and surface, breathing clean truth for its oxygen.

Hardly dreaming, then.

Or not what any man would truly call so.

Other than Mycroft, who seizes on his every moment that might approximate to humanity as a weakness.

And that enough is alone for him to call it no such weakness at all. He goes into his mind-palace, and more often when he needs rest. After all, a man must rest.

That is hardly something for Mycroft to report.

Sherlock Holmes has deigned to rest.

They'd laugh the unofficial government out of his unofficial placing.

And Sherlock would help.

**

Lestrade is not as easily put off.

He pushes chocolate at Sherlock, sometimes, makes mumbled excuses of children and birthday parties and party bags and oh God if I let them have any more, Sherlock, she'll kill me or something, Lestrade says, just eat it after, or something, he says.

There's no pity in his eyes, just tired understanding.

Sherlock waits months, hoping to prove he's wrong, before he tells Lestrade no such expensive chocolate appears in party bags.

Because he knows Lestrade's wife was the giver.

Sometimes, he eats the chocolate, licks the foil.

Bites it between his teeth, sometimes; the sweet chewed aftertaste mingling with the nasty sensation of metal.

It tastes like betrayal.

But it isn't, yet.

**

He dreams himself into precision.

He wakes himself into lethargy.

He knows it cannot last.

He chews on the last wrappers.

He puts on a nicotine patch.

He goes out to untangle the stupidity of hundreds.

And metal, it seems, reeks insides one's mouth, over the gums and between the teeth, and there's no sweetness left.

**

Talk to me, John asks, says, demands. Sherlock, here's tea, talk to me, what are you thinking?

How I drugged you, he spits out.

John only sighs.

Just – don't do it again.

And oh. If that's – he can do that. Not do that. Even for the sake of truth. He can refuse himself, and not do that.

**

I keep dreaming, he says.

So do I, says John, but you know that.

I dream about the mist. 

Yes.

I saw Moriarty.

Yes.

What did you see?

John tells him.

Lestrade, calling himself Greg or rather insisting Sherlock does, for once, brings unwrapped chocolate in a box.

He says

Don't eat the cardboard

He says

Sherlock just tell him

He says

You know none of us give a damn about what your brother can do.

**

Sherlock tries to believe them all.

Unhappily, he finally does.

There was failure in the mist, he tells John, who says comfortingly

Only fear, Sherlock. It doesn't count when it's drugs.

And oh what foolishness, but Sherlock believes him.

That night the mind palace is a consolation before sleep, not after, and it is John who hands him the answers in every room, blowing them clean of any lingering haze first.

**

Only fear.

He begins to live.

And then John can offer no more comfort, for all that he has warned them of, Sherlock's drug-born, mist- _borne_ fear is upon then

I.

O.

U.

And Sherlock will repay his debt.

After all, it was once issued as a threat.

**

 

_Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay._

He can't think of a better.

**

You don't have to do this.

 

**

It's just a magic trick.

**

He's safe in his mind palace, where John, his access always a given, now, might yet clear the debris of his actions away from the truth.

**

He's safe.

**

They're safe.

**

He falls.

And the palace opens its doors to him, clean and unscattered, pristine and ready.

_I will repay._


End file.
